T mobile 5g is suppose to be the best out there--going to try for 30 days-has anyone else?

Works fine for me. No dead spots, no dropped calls, plenty fast enough. Any sad spots that were around are now full bar LTE. The rest is 5G.

In and around NOLA

It's time to lower your expectations on "5G". Tech writers irresponsibly hyped up "5G" without understanding what it is. To this day, they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when they pump out articles/videos. We've been sold "up to Gigabit speeds" and "new mmWave bands" by these amateur idiots. This has led to many people scratching their heads whenever their phones are peaking at 20-30 Mbps on 5G.

Let me explain;

In order to get the speeds that every idiot tech writer has been writing about, carriers will need massive amounts of contiguous spectrum (blocks of 100 MHz of spectrum). Unfortunately, carriers won't find this in existing FDD spectrum they own (Bands 2, 4, 12, 66, etc). To get massive blocks of contiguous spectrum, carriers had to go looking for it in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands.

Success? Not quite.

Anyone who took HS physics would know that higher frequencies don't travel/penetrate as far as lower frequencies. This means that these amazing speeds we've been promised will only be found in certain neighborhoods, parks, convention centers, and stadiums (think of ranges similar to that of WiFi routers). AT&T and Verizon are practically screwed at the moment until the FCC auctions off spectrum in the 3.5 - 3.8 GHz area. In the meantime, in order to be able to claim "nationwide coverage", they have had to repurpose or share existing LTE spectrum with 5G NR (AT&T killed 3G/LTE on the 850 MHz band for n5 while Verizon is using DSS to simultaneously broadcast LTE and NR on the PCS and AWS bands). This is why 5G isn't setting speed records at the moment.

Now there's a reason why I didn't mention T-Mobile. They are the only carrier that currently has the spectrum to offer wide coverage with faster speeds. Clearwire (which was bought by Sprint, which was bought by T-Mobile) owned a lot of EBS/BRS licenses. They owned an average of 160 MHz of bandwidth in the 2.5 - 2.6 GHz band in most markets. While T-Mobile is moving extremely fast in deploying n41 in places such as Houston and Dallas, don't expect to find it everywhere just yet. It'll take time (there was a shortage of equipment a while back).

TL;DR version. Lower your expectations. T-Mobile will likely have the best 5G network in a few years. Today, everyone sucks unless you find their rare mmWave towers that can't penetrate a wet paper towel.

They would have to put a massive amount of towers to get mmWave in every single american neighborhood. The cost of doing this would be astronomical and not feasible for mobile users.

What Verizon is building today is their WISP foundation for tomorrow. mmWave will not be as widespread as people think it will be for mobile users. Small cellphones can't get more than a block of outdoor coverage from mmW small cells. It's bad enough that you can't even get it inside buildings that sit right next to the node.

But sticking directional outdoor antennas for 5G home internet? That's a whole other ballgame and the likely end game for Verizon. Fixed UEs will overcome some of the disadvantages seen on mobile UEs with mmW. For now, Verizon marketing is more than happy to use mmWave as a "proof of concept" for 5G.

Also, at some point Verizon will piss off enough people and have their small cell build out halted. There are similar stories like the one above all over the country. The FCC will eventually fold and shut this down IMO.

I have T-Mobile and 5G in New Orleans with iPhone 12 Pro Max and i literally can tell no difference in my day to day activities. It loads ESPN website and normal stuff just as fast/slow as 4g LTE.

I’m sure it’s faster on paper but for most folks, they wont be able to tell a difference in my opinion.

I believe T-Mobile has only deployes 10x10 MHz of 5G NR in the 600 MHz band (n71). That's not going to give you better speeds (especially in SA mode).

But what n71 will do is give you a lifeline in places where there is congestion since not many users have 5G phones yet.

The real difference maker will come when T-Mobile finally deploys n41 in New Orleans.

Yeah I get about 130Mbps. I definitely notice it.

Ok my speeds here north of Hammond in a fairly rural area are great—200 mbps down and 20 up in speed test. Much faster than my charter WiFi and my ATT phone is 22 mbps down and 4 mbps up on lte here.

I also have three bars of cellular reception vs 2.

I am going to carry both phones for a week or so. I want to use the faster one as a hot spot for my work from home stuff.

Videos are the main thing I see the difference in.

The t mobile phone is an iPhone 12 and the att phone is a ten.

Yes I did that and after a week I moved my number from ATT to T-Mobile.

I am very happy with it. I am using it as a hot spot at home now. I may drop Charter.

You notice the speed when you are streaming or downloading large files. When I set up my phones my 20-30 apps loaded in like 3 or 4 minutes.

Other thing I did was sign up for Amazon HD music streaming--free for 30 days. I am using that to see if I lose connection while traveling.

I get very good download speeds compared to LTE and I get LTE in very remote areas where my ATT phone used to downgrade.